Thursday, December 13, 2012

In George Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984, a tyrannical government masks its activities through the use of Newspeak — saying or doing something opposite of what the word means.

The operative slogans are: War Is Peace; Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength.

A current variant comes to mind, courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Florida branch, which is threatening to sue the Miami-Dade government for voting to replace a moment of silence before County Commission meetings with a prayer.

In other words, the ACLU, self-proclaimed defender of the constitutional freedom of speech, prefers silence, which the formerly cowed commission had required for the past several years.

Anthony Verdugo, executive director of the Christian Family Coalition, which had lobbied for the change, praised the County Commission for “moving into the 21st century,” and described the vote as ending “8½ years of discrimination.”

Meanwhile, stuck in 1984, the ACLU will monitor the next few meetings, and work up some outrage. Then they will file a lawsuit.

“If prayers are sectarian in nature, the county will be sued … ’’ Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in the Miami Herald. “Moving away from a moment of silence is a no-win situation for the county.”

Nonsense. Even Congress opens its sessions with prayers. By the way, “sectarian” is Newspeak for mentioning the name of Jesus. The ACLU can’t actually say they despise Christianity, so they use the blanket term. Occasionally, they’ll pick on a publicly displayed Menorah, just to pretend that this isn’t about eradicating America’s Christian heritage from the growing government sector.

The US's christian theocracy gives justification to the theocracy of islamic countries, especially Iran, and to others that there's a holy war going on in the middle-east between invading US/western crusaders and muslim defenders of islamic lands.

Great local story. My congressman's son beat up his girlfriend, but she defended him so he got only probation. His father, my congressman, basically called his deliberate act of shoving the girlfriend into a gate, an "accident".... Had a republican said that, his career would be finished. But since he's Jim Moran and a democrat, his seat is safe for life.

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Mr. Howard Simon ramblings against the overwhelmingly approved Miami-Dade County Invocation Restoration Ordinance are absolutely absurd. He is recklessly leading the Florida ACLU down the wrong path. Mr. Simon is using the group's clout to fight civil rights, rather than defend them; to push for discrimination, rather than oppose it; to divide and polarize the community, rather than unite it.

Mr. Simon has completely lost it. His Chicken Little reaction to what essentially is a speech equality issue is symptomatic of an individual totally disconnected from the group he represents.

The American people have started public meetings with invocations and prayer since our nation’s founding and the sky has never fallen. So what’s all the silly hysteria about? Could it be bigotry, intolerance, and Christianophobia? Why hasn’t Simon already sued the 67% of Miami-Dade municipalities that begin sessions with formal prayer? He certainly has had more than enough time to file!

Those in charge of ACLU Florida would do well to retire Mr. Simon before he inflicts more damage to the group’s good name and financial resources, like needlessly wasting donors’ money on laughable, frivolous lawsuits that, frankly, don’t have a prayer.

Is the American national anthem politically incorrect? From the 4th verse:Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

Mohammad

The truth can be offensive to some but it must be said

"HATE SPEECH" is free speech: The U.S. Supreme Court stated the general rule regarding protected speech in Texas v. Johnson (109 S.Ct. at 2544), when it held: "The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." Federal courts have consistently followed this. Said Virginia federal district judge Claude Hilton: "The First Amendment does not recognize exceptions for bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas or matters some may deem trivial, vulgar or profane."

Even some advocacy of violence is protected by the 1st Amendment. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously that speech advocating violent illegal actions to bring about social change is protected by the First Amendment "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

The double standard: Atheists can put up signs and billboards saying that Christianity is wrong and that is hunky dory. But if a Christian says that homosexuality is wrong, that is attacked as "hate speech"

One for the militant atheists to consider: "...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" -- Thomas Jefferson

"I think no subject should be off-limits, and I regard the laws in many Continental countries criminalizing Holocaust denial as philosophically repugnant and practically useless – in that they confirm to Jew-haters that the Jews control everything (otherwise why aren’t we allowed to talk about it?)" -- Mark Steyn

Voltaire's most famous saying was actually a summary of Voltaire's thinking by one of his biographers rather than something Voltaire said himself. Nonetheless it is a wholly admirable sentiment: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". I am of a similar mind.

The traditional advice about derogatory speech: "Sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you". Apparently people today are not as emotionally robust as their ancestors were.

Why conservatives should not respond to Leftist abuse: "Never wrestle with a pig, because you'll both just get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

The KKK were members of the DEMOCRATIC party. Google "Klanbake" if you doubt it

A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.

Leftists often pretend that any mention of race is "racist" -- unless they mention it, of course. But leaving such irrational propaganda aside, which statements really are racist? Can statements of fact about race be "racist"? Such statements are simply either true or false. The most sweeping possible definition of racism is that a racist statement is a statement that includes a negative value judgment of some race. Absent that, a statement is not racist, for all that Leftists might howl that it is. Facts cannot be racist so nor is the simple statement of them racist. Here is a statement that cannot therefore be racist by itself, though it could be false: "Blacks are on average much less intelligent than whites". If it is false and someone utters it, he could simply be mistaken or misinformed.

Categorization is a basic human survival skill so racism as the Left define it (i.e. any awareness of race) is in fact neither right nor wrong. It is simply human

Whatever your definition of racism, however, a statement that simply mentions race is not thereby racist -- though one would think otherwise from American Presidential election campaigns. Is a statement that mentions dogs, "doggist" or a statement that mentions cats, "cattist"?

If any mention of racial differences is racist then all Leftists are racist too -- as "affirmative action" is an explicit reference to racial differences

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. It is better for both, therefore, to be separated." -- Spoken at the White House to a group of black community leaders, August 14th, 1862

Gimlet-eyed Leftist haters sometimes pounce on the word "white" as racist. Will the time come when we have to refer to the White House as the "Full spectrum of light" House?

The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand

Mostly, a gaffe is just truth slipping out

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

It seems a pity that the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus is now little known. Remember, wrote the Stoic thinker, "that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you. Wherefore make it your endeavour not to let your impressions carry you away."

"Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?" -- English poet John Milton (1608-1674) in Areopagitica

Leftists can try to get you fired from your job over something that you said and that's not an attack on free speech. But if you just criticize something that they say, then that IS an attack on free speech

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could have been speaking of much that goes on today when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

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